ASRock X58 Extreme3 S1366 Motherboard Review

The X58 Extreme3 motherboard from ASRock is an updated version of the older X58 Extreme; it features many enhancements like USB 3.0, eSATA3, SATA3, better cooling on the 8-phase VRM and updated retention mechanism for the PCI Express slots. We compare its performance to four other X58 motherboards in this review.

Taking a closer look

Packaging:

The X58 Extreme3 motherboard from ASRock can be found in a big cardboard box to protect it and the bulk inside; on the frontal part we can see the ASRock logo, a large coin-like logo which describes the highlights of the board (USB 3.0, SATA3 and eSATA3), the full name of the product and some icon that tell us of the supported technologies and included software; in the bottom left corner we can also see an icon which tells us that the board is fully compatible with the Gulftown CPUs from Intel:

On the back of the box, we can see most of the product features explained with graphics and text, along with the specifications in the bottom right corner; most of the motherboard components are described in the top part:

The interior of the box is dual layered, meaning that on the top part we can see the bundle along with the documentation and installation CD and on the bottom part we can find the motherboard itself:

As bulk, we can find:

a disk with drivers, applications and documentation

the user manual

4 SATA cables

2 power SATA to Molex adapters

one IDE and one floppy cable

a SLI bridge

the motherboard I/O shield

The user manual fully explains how to set up the system from installing the CPU to BIOS configuration and so on:

The board came protected in an anti-static bag but also wrapped in a foam material, to avoid damages during transport:

After getting the board out, we can see that it does have a nice blue/white/black theme and not many mixed colors like in the previous version; a preinstalled fan can be found on the new VRM heatsink and we can see lots of space between PCI Express slots, so we can install dual-slot video cards without the danger of overheating:

The Nuvoton NCT6771F is a Super I/O chip which can be found on the bottom left part of the PCB:

Audio on this board is provided by a VIA VT2020 10-Channel Hi Def Audio CODEC:

The Realtek RTL8111DL Gigabit Ethernet controller takes care of the Gigabit LAN on the board:

The USB 3.0 interface is provided by the well-known NEC D720200F1 controller which can be found in many other devices:

From left to right, on the bottom of the PCB we can find a IR header, a HDMI_SPDIF header, one Floppy header (wondering why some manufacturers still support it), a COM and TPM header, along with a fan and Firewire header:

On the right side, a USB 2.0 header can be found, along with the power LED and Speaker header; the RESET and POWER buttons are very useful when testing the board, before getting it inside a case and the LED display shows us the post codes to identify the errors when they occur: